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Author Topic: Coin trays with imaged tags?  (Read 7459 times)

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Pseudolous

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Coin trays with imaged tags?
« on: November 08, 2009, 01:18:30 pm »
Does anybody store coins like I do? I make tags with obverse design image on them so that I can see both sides of coin at the same time. Sure takes up a lot of slots in my Abafil trays. Not very practical for a sizeable collection like most have though ...

Does anybody have solutions that use tags?


Offline Jay GT4

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2009, 02:15:58 pm »
That's a great idea!  Do you put the obverse and reverse on each side of the tag so you can flip the coin occasionally?

Pseudolous

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #2 on: November 08, 2009, 02:23:18 pm »
No - hadn't thought of that ...

I do select which side of the coin is more important to me and image the other side on tag - not always the obverse.

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #3 on: November 08, 2009, 03:23:03 pm »
Does anybody store coins like I do? I make tags with obverse design image on them so that I can see both sides of coin at the same time. Sure takes up a lot of slots in my Abafil trays. Not very practical for a sizeable collection like most have though ...

Does anybody have solutions that use tags?

Great coins. I hardly know which ones to admire first. Nice idea; my Abafil trays are rather more crowded. The Hercules Musarum is especially nice but so are many of the others including the gold 60As.

The corresponding answer which I have adopted to manage a huge collection (although much worse average quality than these pieces, even my EF gold 60 As is among the few GVF examples in a world where most examples are EF, and my Hercules Musarum has surface corrosion) is to maintain online sets in the same arrangement as the coin trays:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/sets/72157615971952633/detail/

Above is an example, I have 20 such sets covering the entire Roman Republic. What I then do is make pdf's of each page (about 150 pages each with 9 coins) example pages illustrated below. In this way I get a visible snapshot of my collection that matches the tray layout whilst not having double the volume of Abafil trays. From time to time I can run a print of the 150 pages and thus bring my collection with me when travelling. When I bought a colour printer it came free with pdf creation software that allows me to cut and paste selections of web pages before making a pdf, so I can combine all the pages of one set into a single pdf. Very flexible, works great and for me has superseded tags.

Pseudolous

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #4 on: November 08, 2009, 04:08:24 pm »
Andrew M - Good idea! I have my coins on my website put it doesn't work from a database system so very hard distribute horizontally. (Thanks for kind comments - darn small collection I ahve though).

Mike R - I get mine from Ed Waddell at www.coin.com

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #5 on: November 08, 2009, 05:58:42 pm »
Andrew M - Good idea! I have my coins on my website put it doesn't work from a database system so very hard distribute horizontally. (Thanks for kind comments - darn small collection I ahve though).


The problems of managing a collection approaching 2000 coins is perhaps for most of us a luxury problem (we'd love to have it that is!) but I am trying to bring 21st century techniques to bear on it. In the 19th century the answer was to employ someone to manage the collection and/or write a book and/or donate the collection to a museum to curate and/or to curate with help the collection within the confines of a museum: the Duke of Northumberland, Count d'Ailly, and Count de Salis each followed one or more of those paths. Less rich but very important collectors in the 20th century often had their collections sold mainly unillustrated, and sadly so; the rare ones acheived a landmark auction sale.

What I am trying to achieve is a book-format layout that I can print whenever I want straight from the web, the above pictures illustrate. Once you've got this then the printed page or webpage become the visual overview; it then becomes a secondary problem how to keep track of the actual coins which is also very tough indeed, but you may notice an index number in my coin descriptions if you squint at the picture - of the format 05103 (meaning coin 103 from the year 2005). Even if I misattribute or change the attribution date on a coin, its index stays with it forever. That allows me to track an actual coin to a tray even if mis placed from its normal sequence or misdescribed; and in the event of having similar types of worn bronzes, then weight to 0.01 grams is a great decider.

I some time back shifted my hard work to getting my virtual collection in a state of perfect organisation and I trouble much less about the disposition actual collection since I have done so - so long as I can find a given coin when I need to.

Pseudolous

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2009, 06:22:35 pm »
Andrew M - Very interesting. I am always looking for better ways to present and organize information - particularly web based solutions. Perhaps I am a bit spoiled with postal history (first love & occupation) where public exhibits can be rather easily organized.

My philatelic website has client exhibits that are very easy to share http://www.rfrajola.com/exhibits.htm and organize for public viewing.

(add-on) I forgot - one of my exhibits has both coins and postal history: http://www.rfrajola.com/wash2006/wash2006frame1.htm

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #7 on: November 08, 2009, 08:04:52 pm »
Andrew M - Very interesting. I am always looking for better ways to present and organize information - particularly web based solutions. Perhaps I am a bit spoiled with postal history (first love & occupation) where public exhibits can be rather easily organized.

My philatelic website has client exhibits that are very easy to share http://www.rfrajola.com/exhibits.htm and organize for public viewing.

First of all Richard I must commend you for a fantastic philatelic website - although nominally off-topic here, the way it lays out information is great, and I loved the pictures and related stories.

The picture below is a further illustration of the power of web-based solutions: it illustrates and discusses a single coin type (RPC 5416, Octavian/Prow, of which I have three of the 12 known examples, the first of mine which incidentally I bought from FORVM) and is actually a screenshot of a PDF, made via a print-to-pdf of this web page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/sets/72157616089488748/detail/?page=4

The ability to layout the photos alphabetically (or reverse alphabetical or chronological or by other keys) use of links to other coins, text, references and to a powerpoint presentation illustration, side-by-side comparison pics and close-ups, together with a plain white background to the web page with no other distracting material and no commercial stuff gives the visual impression of a properly written page from an old-fashioned book (which I can print to pdf and/or to paper-ink) whilst at the same time allowing dynamic exploration.

I only three days ago acquired and photographed the top-left hand coin: by simply copying over the same data as for the other coins of this type, it automatically appeared on the page I wanted to the moment I uploaded it, just because I've set this particular set of coins to sort alphabetically; a quick visit to a comparator coin RPC 533 a couple of cut and pastes and the lower right hand pic appeared on the webpage, a few minutes free hand text under the two new images and the upated page as you see it appears. Thus I have been able to dynamically build up the story of this coin, in fact over the last 3 months, one picture at a time, whilst at any one time I can print-to-pdf the webpage and thus memoralise the current status of my research on a given coin. Of course it is at all times available for the world to see if by chance they are interested in RPC 5416 or any of the other 1600 coins on the site.

Overall it gives me a strong sense of control to have my collection laid out in a manner that might pass for a book if printed to pdf, moreover available from any computer with an internet connection. My main page http://andrewmccabe.ancients.info/#quick which is primarily focussed on numismatic books is the ultimate index to finding my way around my own collection.

Thus the bizzare scene often arises that I take a box of coins and then go onto my webpage in order to find the coins within. I do sometimes wonder what I need the physical coins for anymore!

Pseudolous

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #8 on: November 08, 2009, 08:13:38 pm »
Andrew - Very cool again. I particularly relate to and agree with your terminal sentence - " I do sometimes wonder what I need the physical coins for anymore!"

Offline Philoromaos

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #9 on: November 09, 2009, 08:00:49 am »
Fantastic republicans! I wish mine were of the quality as yours!

Offline Paleologo

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #10 on: November 09, 2009, 09:31:52 am »
Does anybody store coins like I do?

I don't but it's definitely one of the coolest ways I've ever seen  ;D

One question: I understand you don't flip the coins often, if at all. Did you experience differences in the way the exposed side patinates, compared to the hidden one?

Thanks, P.  :)
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Offline Paleologo

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #11 on: November 09, 2009, 09:51:14 am »
Thanks Richard. In my experience a couple of years in trays, even in a closed box, is enough for silver coins who didn't already have a heavy patina to show surface change, sometimes developing some beautiful multicolor toning. I think you will have time to judge for yourself  :)
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Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: Coin trays with imaged tags?
« Reply #12 on: November 09, 2009, 03:01:14 pm »
I've been asked offlist how exactly I produced the printer-ready pdf's which I showed examples of above, and how did I set up my database, which database programme did I use, how did I integrate with website etc etc.

The answers are more dull and mundane than one could imagine. There are no image files at all saved on my webhost and I didn't write any html code to include images on my webpages, I haven't set up any type of picture database, I didn't use any publishing software to produce the pdf files, I didn't write either the detailed coin descriptions or the coin titles that you can see on the above examples, and I have never learnt to use any kind of database programme.

In reality it is all smoke-and-mirrors, using my 15 year old excel spreadsheet list of coins (I learnt how to use a spread-sheet using Lotus 1-2-3 on an original IBM PC with an 8086 processor and haven't learnt any new skills since), some text-only web-pages (no pictures, no java code), and some free bundled software that came with my 100 euro printer. My html skills are entirely limited to knowing how to mark headers and paragraphs, how to embed links, and a few codes for special characters such as quotation marks and umlauts. I don't know how to upload an image to my web-hosting service because I've never done it. Someone helped me set up the side-menu on my individual webpages e.g. as seen here: http://andrewmccabe.ancients.info/Coins_History.html but I wouldn't know how to do it myself. It's all a lot less sophisticated than one might think.

If there is any interest in how I used such basic computer literacy skills to achieve a quite decent result, I could share. There is hope out there for those who never advanced beyond Lotus 1-2-3 and have never learnt html (or, indeed, java), let alone a database programme.

regards

 

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